Do ppl really not know what millet is?

nryerson1025 · March 2019

in my region, this goes by a different term. i didn't know what millet was til it was explained in this post

Caligamy_ESO · March 2019

You mean.. its not a party in the back?

Linaleah · March 2019

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Do you think everyone grows up in a farm or something? I had no idea what millet was 30 seconds ago.

I don't think its a farm thing as much as regional thing? cause back in soviet union, millet was a fairly standard grain to use as a side for a dish. rice? not as much. rice was an expensive delicacy. meanwhile here, rice is staple of limited budget cooking nowadays in US, so... /shrug.

Nope, they ate mostly potatoes and oatmeal as side dish, rice was pretty common as well. Fillet was secondary cheap and healthy food, which majority of population obviously didn't like.
What you are talking is more about pre-soviet times when 80% of Russians were living in small villages as serfs.

dude. I literally grew up in soviet union i know what we had and didn't have available. pilaf was something that was made as a holiday dish, for special occasions. and its true that millet was not favored. but it WAS cheap and much more readily available, as was buckwheat. and since we are talking about specifically grains, oatmeal was a breakfast grain. millet was lunch, usually with meat. and event then - we ate farina porridge far more often then oatmeal. and once again, let me stress. REGIONAL THING. there were soviet republics, yes, where rice was more common. which is part of the point. regional availability. and its not like we didn't have rice. it just wasn't the cheapest. kinda like bananas. which for a kid me were such a delicacy and a treat. and then i get to US and they are like.. the cheapest fruit you could get. apples on the other hand that were ridiculously common and cheap. cost like 4 times as much as bananas.

regional differences ftw.

also you just said you didn't know what millet was and now you are trying to correct me over something you only just found out by hearsay? really?

Danikat · March 2019

Even today there's a lot of regional variation in the availability of different foods. In a lot of places you can get almost anything, but some things are much harder to find than they would be elsewhere in the world (even elsewhere in the same country).

A while ago I got a Syrian cook book which uses quite a few ingredients I hadn't used before. Some of them (like tahini paste) I could get in my local supermarket. Others, like freekeh, I had to buy from specialist shops, in spite of the fact that it's made from durum wheat which you can buy raw, or as flour or semolina or all kinds of other forms (and finished products like pasta obviously). But for whatever reason freekeh isn't as common over here. (Not quite as bad as some things in my Indian cook book, which I've always had to order online or wait until I'm going to a big city to buy.)

Millet is in kind of an odd position at the moment. I mainly think of it as either bird food or a wheat flour alternative for making muffins and cakes, but apparently it's also being promoted here as an amazing health food so you can buy tiny boxes of raw millet grains for 10x the normal price in health food shops...if you don't know to look elsewhere for cheaper options. Give it a few months and the health food trend crowd will probably move on to something else and it will go back to being sold for birds and bakers.

MartiniDaniels · March 2019

Linaleah wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Do you think everyone grows up in a farm or something? I had no idea what millet was 30 seconds ago.

I don't think its a farm thing as much as regional thing? cause back in soviet union, millet was a fairly standard grain to use as a side for a dish. rice? not as much. rice was an expensive delicacy. meanwhile here, rice is staple of limited budget cooking nowadays in US, so... /shrug.

Nope, they ate mostly potatoes and oatmeal as side dish, rice was pretty common as well. Fillet was secondary cheap and healthy food, which majority of population obviously didn't like.
What you are talking is more about pre-soviet times when 80% of Russians were living in small villages as serfs.

dude. I literally grew up in soviet union i know what we had and didn't have available. pilaf was something that was made as a holiday dish, for special occasions. and its true that millet was not favored. but it WAS cheap and much more readily available, as was buckwheat. and since we are talking about specifically grains, oatmeal was a breakfast grain. millet was lunch, usually with meat. and event then - we ate farina porridge far more often then oatmeal. and once again, let me stress. REGIONAL THING. there were soviet republics, yes, where rice was more common. which is part of the point. regional availability. and its not like we didn't have rice. it just wasn't the cheapest. kinda like bananas. which for a kid me were such a delicacy and a treat. and then i get to US and they are like.. the cheapest fruit you could get. apples on the other hand that were ridiculously common and cheap. cost like 4 times as much as bananas.

regional differences ftw.

also you just said you didn't know what millet was and now you are trying to correct me over something you only just found out by hearsay? really?

Not me, it was OP.

Bro, if you spent your childhood there, I believe that at school millet porridge may be quite often as dinner garnish for kids, because it's healthy food. But as common meal potato (and bread) ruled the day, because they are much more cost-effective in production. Grain -> potato thing happened in many countries during history. You may just check production numbers of wheat, potato and millet and see that millet is times smaller, certainly not enough to be a "standard side dish" for such huge country.
From what I know millet is secondary grain which is sown when soil and conditions are not good enough for wheat.
Maybe we simply don't understand each other. If you tell that millet porridge/soup was quite common, yes, but were it standard, i.e. main side dish - certainly no. I didn't grown there, but I know a lot of people, who did. Ask anybody and they all will tell that millet is meh and they preferred potato anytime.

Now I will add some numbers I goodled and averaged:

Millet production at 1990 in Russia - 2 millions metric tons (and it was high year for millet btw)
Potato production at 1990 in Russia - 32 millions metric tons
Millet production efficiency ~ 1.5 tons per hectare
Potato production efficiency ~ 12 tons per hectare

Even if data is somewhat incorrect, magnitude of difference shows potato superiority for sure

Zacuel · March 2019

You're a millet!!

Ahem... Sorry, I have no clue...

*Reads thread*

Linaleah · March 2019

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Do you think everyone grows up in a farm or something? I had no idea what millet was 30 seconds ago.

I don't think its a farm thing as much as regional thing? cause back in soviet union, millet was a fairly standard grain to use as a side for a dish. rice? not as much. rice was an expensive delicacy. meanwhile here, rice is staple of limited budget cooking nowadays in US, so... /shrug.

Nope, they ate mostly potatoes and oatmeal as side dish, rice was pretty common as well. Fillet was secondary cheap and healthy food, which majority of population obviously didn't like.
What you are talking is more about pre-soviet times when 80% of Russians were living in small villages as serfs.

dude. I literally grew up in soviet union i know what we had and didn't have available. pilaf was something that was made as a holiday dish, for special occasions. and its true that millet was not favored. but it WAS cheap and much more readily available, as was buckwheat. and since we are talking about specifically grains, oatmeal was a breakfast grain. millet was lunch, usually with meat. and event then - we ate farina porridge far more often then oatmeal. and once again, let me stress. REGIONAL THING. there were soviet republics, yes, where rice was more common. which is part of the point. regional availability. and its not like we didn't have rice. it just wasn't the cheapest. kinda like bananas. which for a kid me were such a delicacy and a treat. and then i get to US and they are like.. the cheapest fruit you could get. apples on the other hand that were ridiculously common and cheap. cost like 4 times as much as bananas.

regional differences ftw.

also you just said you didn't know what millet was and now you are trying to correct me over something you only just found out by hearsay? really?

Not me, it was OP.

Bro, if you spent your childhood there, I believe that at school millet porridge may be quite often as dinner garnish for kids, because it's healthy food. But as common meal potato (and bread) ruled the day, because they are much more cost-effective in production. Grain -> potato thing happened in many countries during history. You may just check production numbers of wheat, potato and millet and see that millet is times smaller, certainly not enough to be a "standard side dish" for such huge country.
From what I know millet is secondary grain which is sown when soil and conditions are not good enough for wheat.
Maybe we simply don't understand each other. If you tell that millet porridge/soup was quite common, yes, but were it standard, i.e. main side dish - certainly no. I didn't grown there, but I know a lot of people, who did. Ask anybody and they all will tell that millet is meh and they preferred potato anytime.

Now I will add some numbers I goodled and averaged:

Millet production at 1990 in Russia - 2 millions metric tons (and it was high year for millet btw)
Potato production at 1990 in Russia - 32 millions metric tons
Millet production efficiency ~ 1.5 tons per hectare
Potato production efficiency ~ 12 tons per hectare

Even if data is somewhat incorrect, magnitude of difference shows potato superiority for sure

yes potato was common. but we are comparing GRAINS and how common they are regionally. potato is NOT a grain. moreover, in certain circumstances - millet was a standard dish, part of the reason why it was disliked so much. serving in the army for example - which was compulsory for men (and while it was possible to dodge the draft, it was only possible to do so without bad consequences under very special circumstances - like... being seriously disabled... or a child of a highly placed official). also, I will not speak for every single republic, but I will tell you this much... buckwheat was almost as common as potato as side dish in colder republics. and breakfast grain as well. the very same buckwheat that was trendy for a while. and when it comes to rice vs millet back in those days? yeah, millet was more common. far more common then rice. not as common as potato, but more common then rice. so as i said. regional differences. i was literally making a point that depending on where you live - you may be more, or less familiar with something due to its availability. and you are arguing with me about semantics

on a basis of second hand knowledge no less

but fine, lets talk vegetables, since you seem to keep going back to potatoes. to illustrate a point about familiarity with something based on a region which was my point from the start. potatoes are common in US and former USSR, so people are probably about equally familiar with them. however. celery is something i haven't actualy tasted or knew that it was even a thing, until we immigrated. it just wasn't a common thing, just like millet wasn't a commonly eaten by people thing in US unless you are into trendy stuff.. meanwhile - summer radish was a super common staple while here most of the time i don't even see it in stores. familiarity with a particular food stuff is most often a regional thing.

xxthir13enxx · March 2019

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I always make fun of my Canadian friend because he didn't know what "bread" was. Like, the only thing he knew was toast and thought that's all there is. All the different "breads" in the world are just different kinds of toast he thought. xD

I had to teach him that there is more than just wheat, different methods of baking and so on and so forth. German bread diversity is UNESCO world culture heritage with over 100 different kinds of bread. Millet, rye, wheat, barley, oats, buckwheat you name it! Different flours from different grains make different bread, add baking techniques and ingredients like sesame and poppy and you get easily past the 100 kinds of bread mark.

As a Canadian, I’m going to assume your Canadian friend was just making a joke...or I will be applying to rescind your friends Canadian citizenship....on the basis of being a poor representative of our country...lol smh....

Cundu_Ertur · March 2019

Obviously, Millet is the system of separate courts of law for people based on their religious community in the Ottoman Empire.

I mean, who doesn't know that.

edit to add: Also, there were no potatoes in Russia or Germany or Poland or Ireland before 1492.

zaria · March 2019

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

its kinda funny how whenever something becomes a health trend its suddenly expensive and fancy, regardless of its origins.

Nothing is ever priced based on some kind of intrinsic, immutable value. Items only have value based on subjective human decisions. If humans suddenly decide they like millet more than they did the day before, regardless of reason, millet really, truly has become more valuable overnight.

This pretty much like some sets become very expensive in ESO once used in popular builds.

Wildberryjack · March 2019

Millet and Quinoa are both staples of my diet. Very useful and good for you. I use Millet in place of oatmeal for breakfast often in fact. Quinoa is used in place of rice all the time.

Kiralyn2000 · March 2019

Been aware of millet for decades, because we buy 40lb bags of it to feed to the birds in our yard (it's scattered on the ground for the ground-feeding birds), along with 50lb bags of sunflower seed (which goes in bird feeders).

Of course, my mother's been peripherally into that "ancient grains" trendy crap, so I also knew that people eat it.

/shrug

(oh, this is northeast suburban US)

edit: buying big bags of seed from a farm-style Feed Store is a lot cheaper than those bags of "wild bird seed" that you see at grocery and pet stores

starkerealm · March 2019

LeagueTroll wrote: »

Had some chat in my trade guild, apparently ppl think millet is not common pheasant food, but some hyper healthy gluten free stuff? I know it’s year 9012 now and potatoes been grown in old world for centuries, but still.

Pfff, everyone knows that a millet is business in the front, party in the back.

barney2525 · March 2019

Millet - Female Mill ?

ezio45 · March 2019

nope never heard of it before eso

jainiadral · March 2019

So that's where I've heard of millet before the superfoods craze-- birdseed. I'm pretty sure it was a part of my pet rat's seed mix when I was a kid. I've probably eaten it eleventy trillion times as a side ingredient in things, including ancient grain-based cereals. Probably cooked like rice in with some other grains of various kinds. Unlike buckwheat, which is utterly awesome in pancakes, I'm not actively conscious of it as a separate flavor *shrug*

I'm kind of a crappy example of someone living in hippie-ster central (Northern Cali). I'm pretty sure you can get millet here even at the discount grocery chains like FoodMaxx, let alone mainstream stores like Safeway or Whole Foods. I probably should try some recipes using it one of these days, I guess. I'm not that eager, though. US/European-based foods aren't my thing lately. Made a killer fish-based laing the other day--I'd never cooked with taro leaves before.

https://www.overseaspinoycooking.net/2009/11/laing-at-daing-laing-with-dried-fish.html

Sleep · March 2019

it's an Asian company that designs phones

Cundu_Ertur · March 2019

jainiadral wrote: »

So that's where I've heard of millet before the superfoods craze-- birdseed. I'm pretty sure it was a part of my pet rat's seed mix when I was a kid. I've probably eaten it eleventy trillion times as a side ingredient in things, including ancient grain-based cereals. Probably cooked like rice in with some other grains of various kinds. Unlike buckwheat, which is utterly awesome in pancakes, I'm not actively conscious of it as a separate flavor *shrug*

I'm kind of a crappy example of someone living in hippie-ster central (Northern Cali). I'm pretty sure you can get millet here even at the discount grocery chains like FoodMaxx, let alone mainstream stores like Safeway or Whole Foods. I probably should try some recipes using it one of these days, I guess. I'm not that eager, though. US/European-based foods aren't my thing lately. Made a killer fish-based laing the other day--I'd never cooked with taro leaves before.

https://www.overseaspinoycooking.net/2009/11/laing-at-daing-laing-with-dried-fish.html

Millet is supposedly common in Asian and African foods, too. I think it was only missing from pre-Columbian American foods, even then they had quinoa and chia to fill similar roles.

twev · March 2019

coop500 wrote: »

I didn't know millet was a real item O.O

Yeah, it's realworld stuff.
It's a little more common than most people know or believe.
Now find a store that sells Saltrice....

Sylvermynx · March 2019

Linaleah wrote: »

<snipped>
but fine, lets talk vegetables, since you seem to keep going back to potatoes. to illustrate a point about familiarity with something based on a region which was my point from the start. potatoes are common in US and former USSR, so people are probably about equally familiar with them. however. celery is something i haven't actualy tasted or knew that it was even a thing, until we immigrated. it just wasn't a common thing, just like millet wasn't a commonly eaten by people thing in US unless you are into trendy stuff.. meanwhile - summer radish was a super common staple while here most of the time i don't even see it in stores. familiarity with a particular food stuff is most often a regional thing.

Technically, potato is a tuber, and classed as a starch not a vegetable. It's easier to call it a vegetable.... All potatoes originated from a single origin: what are now south Peru and northwest Bolivia, 7000 to 10000 years ago. Also, it's related to tomato, being a nightshade as well. AFAIK, potato has never been classed as a fruit, unlike tomato....

jainiadral · March 2019

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

jainiadral wrote: »

So that's where I've heard of millet before the superfoods craze-- birdseed. I'm pretty sure it was a part of my pet rat's seed mix when I was a kid. I've probably eaten it eleventy trillion times as a side ingredient in things, including ancient grain-based cereals. Probably cooked like rice in with some other grains of various kinds. Unlike buckwheat, which is utterly awesome in pancakes, I'm not actively conscious of it as a separate flavor *shrug*

I'm kind of a crappy example of someone living in hippie-ster central (Northern Cali). I'm pretty sure you can get millet here even at the discount grocery chains like FoodMaxx, let alone mainstream stores like Safeway or Whole Foods. I probably should try some recipes using it one of these days, I guess. I'm not that eager, though. US/European-based foods aren't my thing lately. Made a killer fish-based laing the other day--I'd never cooked with taro leaves before.

https://www.overseaspinoycooking.net/2009/11/laing-at-daing-laing-with-dried-fish.html

Millet is supposedly common in Asian and African foods, too. I think it was only missing from pre-Columbian American foods, even then they had quinoa and chia to fill similar roles.

I'd be curious which Asian cuisines use it. I haven't run across it in Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Burmese, Laotian, Chinese, or Thai restaurants. Amusingly enough, the Asian supermarkets here (99 Ranch and Seafood City) are the only places I haven't seen millet.

Off to investigate now! Am dying of curiosity

Editing: "restaurant" seems to be the key word. Millet's apparently a common staple in almost every region's cooking at some point in history-- and I wonder if its ubiquity had something to do with how it fell out of favor. A lot of the widely available cookbooks tend to be written by restaurateurs. Well, TIL, just like this thread

Time to find some recipes!

zaria · March 2019

twev wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

I didn't know millet was a real item O.O

Yeah, it's realworld stuff.
It's a little more common than most people know or believe.
Now find a store that sells Saltrice....

Lots are not native English speakers, so unless you are into cooking you probably don't know the English name of rarer food ingredients, I assumed saltrice was one as it sounded real unlike stuff like nirnroot and moonsugar.

jainiadral · March 2019

zaria wrote: »

twev wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

I didn't know millet was a real item O.O

Yeah, it's realworld stuff.
It's a little more common than most people know or believe.
Now find a store that sells Saltrice....

Lots are not native English speakers, so unless you are into cooking you probably don't know the English name of rarer food ingredients, I assumed saltrice was one as it sounded real unlike stuff like nirnroot and moonsugar.

You're not alone-- and I am a native English speaker

I had to Google it. For some reason, up until I started the EP storyline, I'd never heard it pronounced. I thought it was "saltriss" and was some kind of solution like saltpeter.

Oberstein · March 2019

i used to feed my pig with millet now it's become unicorn.

Sylvermynx · March 2019

Well, of course, saltrice is probably a take on wild rice - but AFAIK it's not a real food like millet.

jainiadral · March 2019

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Well, of course, saltrice is probably a take on wild rice - but AFAIK it's not a real food like millet.

According to one of the Elder Scrolls wikis, it's rice raised in saltwater.

Sylvermynx · March 2019

jainiadral wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Well, of course, saltrice is probably a take on wild rice - but AFAIK it's not a real food like millet.

According to one of the Elder Scrolls wikis, it's rice raised in saltwater.

Hmm. Well, of course that makes sense in the game PoV. But I've never been able to find anything real-world like it. Even in China rice is raised in fresh-water paddies. At least as far as I've been able to find out. Stepdaughter has spent many months in China over the years, and has described (and sent pics) of the farmers opening gates from either a river or an irrigation ditch to flood the paddies. Now, I don't know if she ever was near the coast and saw anything like salt-water flooding.

jainiadral · March 2019

Sylvermynx wrote: »

jainiadral wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Well, of course, saltrice is probably a take on wild rice - but AFAIK it's not a real food like millet.

According to one of the Elder Scrolls wikis, it's rice raised in saltwater.

Hmm. Well, of course that makes sense in the game PoV. But I've never been able to find anything real-world like it. Even in China rice is raised in fresh-water paddies. At least as far as I've been able to find out. Stepdaughter has spent many months in China over the years, and has described (and sent pics) of the farmers opening gates from either a river or an irrigation ditch to flood the paddies. Now, I don't know if she ever was near the coast and saw anything like salt-water flooding.

Most plants die if there's too much salt in the soil, including rice. But genetic engineering's come to the rescue! Pretty awesome

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/06/rice-grown-in-desert-using-seawater-with-over-double-the-global-average-yields.html

Cundu_Ertur · March 2019

jainiadral wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

jainiadral wrote: »

So that's where I've heard of millet before the superfoods craze-- birdseed. I'm pretty sure it was a part of my pet rat's seed mix when I was a kid. I've probably eaten it eleventy trillion times as a side ingredient in things, including ancient grain-based cereals. Probably cooked like rice in with some other grains of various kinds. Unlike buckwheat, which is utterly awesome in pancakes, I'm not actively conscious of it as a separate flavor *shrug*

I'm kind of a crappy example of someone living in hippie-ster central (Northern Cali). I'm pretty sure you can get millet here even at the discount grocery chains like FoodMaxx, let alone mainstream stores like Safeway or Whole Foods. I probably should try some recipes using it one of these days, I guess. I'm not that eager, though. US/European-based foods aren't my thing lately. Made a killer fish-based laing the other day--I'd never cooked with taro leaves before.

https://www.overseaspinoycooking.net/2009/11/laing-at-daing-laing-with-dried-fish.html

Millet is supposedly common in Asian and African foods, too. I think it was only missing from pre-Columbian American foods, even then they had quinoa and chia to fill similar roles.

I'd be curious which Asian cuisines use it. I haven't run across it in Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Burmese, Laotian, Chinese, or Thai restaurants. Amusingly enough, the Asian supermarkets here (99 Ranch and Seafood City) are the only places I haven't seen millet.

Off to investigate now! Am dying of curiosity

Editing: "restaurant" seems to be the key word. Millet's apparently a common staple in almost every region's cooking at some point in history-- and I wonder if its ubiquity had something to do with how it fell out of favor. A lot of the widely available cookbooks tend to be written by restaurateurs. Well, TIL, just like this thread Time to find some recipes!

I think it's more of a central Asia, NW China kind of thing. Some Indian cuisines have it (like China there's more than one part of India, it's huge. Almost as big as Texas) but I don't think the SE Asians had much use for it, it's a dry crop as I understand it.

AngelFires333 · March 2019

McDonalds is peasant food.